Early in the second half, things seemed to be going really well for the Arizona State Sun Devils, especially after junior guard Alonzo Verge Jr. led the team on an 8-2 run by himself to close the first half.

The Sun Devils were able to expand their 45-41 halftime lead on the Washington Huskies to a 12-point advantage just during the first five minutes of the second. However, ASU’s defensive complacency and poor shooting allowed UW (14-16, 4-13 Pac-12) to rally and come away with a 90-83 victory for their first road win of conference play.

“At home, you got to win these types of games this time of year,” coach Bobby Hurley said. “Credit to Washington. They have the players, they have a great coach that’s been coach of the year the last two years.

“They had some adversity, there were a lot of games that they were in the mix to win and they just couldn’t win them. But they’re, I’m sure, trying to gear up for Vegas to try and make a run. We ran into a team that played really well tonight.”

With this loss, ASU (19-11, 10-7) must be thinking the same thing with their NCAA tournament résumé taking a tough blow. At this point, the outlook appears to be right around that last four in spot and a trip to Dayton, Ohio which they’ve become so accustomed to over the past two seasons.

Tonight was an odd game for the Sun Devils, and although they’ve let teams back into games in which they’ve led all season, they’ve usually been able to seal the deal because of their defensive intensity and will to win. That was not the case against the Huskies, who outhustled ASU down the stretch and seemed to fight harder for the win when it mattered most.

“We went through a stretch, once we got up to 61-49, that we stopped running back on defense,” Hurley said. “We were not running back hard. I resisted calling a timeout, and maybe I should’ve called one maybe a minute or two sooner—I was trying to get to the under-12 (tv timeout)—but that was a big part of the game, that one stretch where we did not run back hard on defense.

“That’s hard to explain why you would choose to do that when you’ve done a lot of things well, not only in this game but throughout the season.”

Specifically, Hurley credited UW’s junior guard Nahziah Carter and freshman forward Isaiah Stewart for leading this effort, as they constantly got behind ASU’s defense to quickly respond to a basket or score in transition off a miss.

“Carter’s really coming into his own,” Hurley commented. “He’s playing well, he made a lot of plays out there. He was probably the best player on the court tonight.”

Carter tied Sun Devils senior guard Rob Edwards (9-for-16 field goals, 5-for-11 threes, plus six rebounds) for a game-high 23 points, shooting 9-for-14 from the field and making 5-of-8 threes. Stewart notched a double-double with 14 points (6-for-8 field goals, 2-for-2 free throws) and a game-high 12 rebounds, adding two blocks and two steals.

In total, the Sun Devils got outscored 27-21 on fast break points, which is a type of game that normally plays to their favor, except for tonight. That 27 points allowed on the fast break seems to be significantly higher than anything they’ve given up in a game in recent seasons, and getting outscored 16-8 on second-chance points didn’t help either.

“I think we just need to stay a little more disciplined and solid at certain points,” Junior guard Remy Martin said. “When we do play good defense and they still hit a shot I think that we still need to stay disciplined. They’re a very talented team, so we play good defense sometimes and they’re going to hit good shots, I think we just got to stay with it through the whole time.”

On the offensive end, Martin failed to affect the game, not scoring in the final 35:55 of action. His six points on 2-for-14 shooting, including 1-for-10 from three, and 1-for-2 on free throws were his worst showing since the stretch of games against St. Mary’s and Creighton in mid-December, when he combined to shoot 3-for-18, and 1-for-11 from three, to score seven points over two games.

His effort tonight didn’t even have him as one of the top five scorers on the team, wasting double-digit efforts by Verge (19 points on 7-for-12 field goals, 4-for-5 threes, 1-for-1 free throws, plus three steals, three assists, a rebound) and sophomore forward Taeshon Cherry (13 points on 4-for-8 field goals, 0-for-2 threes, 5-for-5 free throws, plus team-high seven rebounds).

“It just wasn’t my night,” Martin said. “I don’t think I have too many nights like this, but when I do it kind of stings just because I put so much work into it. I just think I need to do a better job of making plays.”

Hurley felt like this matchup, in particular, did not bode well for Martin, although he had 19 points against them one month earlier on the road.

“Remy had this game, but we would never be in the position to have the season that we’ve had without Remy,” Hurley said. “This defense in particular I think is not built for him because of just the size and the quickness of their four guys that kind of set up a wall out there. So, it’s hard for him to penetrate, hard for him to get a clean look from three.

“It’s one of those situations where, as a player, I think with him, he knows he’s not going to get many open ones, the way they were guarding him. So, you put more pressure on yourself to make that shot. But he’ll get it straight, I’m not worried about him.”

What the Sun Devils should be worried about was their inability to slow down momentum once UW found it. On three separate occasions in the final 15 minutes, they went on runs of 7-0 or longer.

The key ones were an 8-0 run—with six of those points coming from dunks—that spanned from 11:49 to 7:51 and turned ASU’s 65-61 lead into a 69-65 deficit, then a 7-0 run that spanned 5:17 to 2:44, turning a 72-71 ASU advantage into a 78-72 deficit that really put their backs against the wall.

“Their primary guys really had monster games,” Hurley said. “They shot well. Our defense hasn’t been what it was prior to us going to the LA’s.”

On top of Carter and Stewart, Hurley credited freshman forward Jaden McDaniels, who finished as the game’s third-highest scorer with 16 points (5-for-13 field goals, 2-for-6 threes, 4-for-5 free throws, plus six rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal) and scored 10 of those in the last 15 minutes.

Of course, making shots the way they were earlier in the game would’ve helped give ASU a chance down the stretch. As a matter of fact, the Sun Devils finished 4-for-17 from three after starting the game 7-for-14.

“I think we could’ve got better shots, especially my shots,” Martin said. “I just need to find something else, if it’s not falling, to try to affect the game. But I think the quality of shots is what we’ve been shooting, but it’s been going in. Today it just didn’t.”

Hurley had an idea of how they could’ve improved in this aspect, which is something he repeated from this past week in evaluating last Saturday’s loss at USC.

“I thought one negative was I don’t think Romello got the ball enough in the second half,” Hurley said. “This was more of a players game. It’s hard to script offense against their zone, you’ve got to have movement, you got to move the ball, you got to try and get into a seam off the bounce, if you can, and draw help, and then you got to slide guys in and out of the high post.”

While the Sun Devils did allow the second-most points in a game this season, they put up their highest scoring output since defeating UCLA 84-66 at home one month ago. This offensive effort would’ve better come to light had they not tensed up and collapsed the way they did down the stretch of the game.

ASU will have one more chance to get things right ahead of the conference tournament when they host the Washington State Cougars (15-14, 6-10 Pac-12) Saturday for senior day. The game will tip-off at 4:30 p.m. and air on Pac-12 Network.